Okay, well I'm going to try and make this as short as possible..
First of all I've been using a 14" ibook g4 for the past 3-4 years and I love it, it was my first apple and still runs strong. Recently though, I've been reaching it's limits in the ram, storage but most importantly the option to power an HD external display because I like to edit photos and might dive into video soon..
I already own a 24" LG external that I've always dreamed of plugging my ibook into (I would keep my ibook forever if I could run an HD monitor), so last week I bought a stock white macbook with the 9400m and 2g ram. I've used it extensively for about 7 days and it handles my current power needs very well, even when hooked up to the LG, which is the main reason I bought it. It's an awesome machine..
The huge drawbacks for the macbook to me is the new keyboard and the glossy display which are both very different from my ibook.. It's not so much the glare that bothers me (on a few occasions it has), but it's mainly the contrast + extremely bright colors that i'm not used to and it hurts my eyes after about 2 hours of work.. I want to love this machine but I can't, therefore I must return it.... Here is where it gets complicated..
In the first couple days of my new macbook I ordered a 2.5ghz 17" mbp w/ 4g ram, 320gb hard drive and glossy display. At the time, I thought the glossy would not bother me, plus it was all the online apple store has had in the refurbished section for a while, so I went with it... It's arriving tomorrow but I'm about 90% sure that i'm not opening the box and going to send it right back because of the display.
Okay.. then tonight, a 17" mbp popped up on the apple refurb site with the same exact specs but with LED Anti Glare.. this is exactly what I wanted all along so I ordered it before it sold because I've notice they are becoming harder to find these days.
Now my concerns.. I love the previous generation macbook pro's because of the keyboard that I'm used to from my ibook and the DVI out that I need (and I might buy a 30" external eventually). I also just prefer the overall design, it's classic..
anyways, I've been reading all these forums
and I'm worried about dealing with exploding batteries (hopefully apple will be getting batteries from a new vendor soon), small high pitched noise coming from something related to the LED technology or GPU?, excessive heat issues and case warping which doesn't bother me that much and in my opinion will probably be a problem with the unibodies as well (It's just my opinion, time will tell). I love 
so my plan is to use my old ibook for portability since I can't buy a new macbook that doesn't give me headaches.. and then use the prev. gen MBP for around the house, occasional travel and hooking up to my 24" LG and possibly 30" in the future..
So it comes down to this,, should I accept the quirkiness of the previous generation 17" MBP and just be happy with it, use it to it's full glory.. or are the problems I listed above really something to worry about? I've greatly considered the unibody 17" antiglare as it probably addresses my main issues (the exploding battery being #1) but it also has drawbacks, for me atleast.. I prefer the classic design, old keyboard, video out options and I think both cases are prone to warping etc...
Please ease my mind with your thoughts.. should I be worrying about such small problems with the previous generation MBP so much?
First of all I've been using a 14" ibook g4 for the past 3-4 years and I love it, it was my first apple and still runs strong. Recently though, I've been reaching it's limits in the ram, storage but most importantly the option to power an HD external display because I like to edit photos and might dive into video soon..
I already own a 24" LG external that I've always dreamed of plugging my ibook into (I would keep my ibook forever if I could run an HD monitor), so last week I bought a stock white macbook with the 9400m and 2g ram. I've used it extensively for about 7 days and it handles my current power needs very well, even when hooked up to the LG, which is the main reason I bought it. It's an awesome machine..
The huge drawbacks for the macbook to me is the new keyboard and the glossy display which are both very different from my ibook.. It's not so much the glare that bothers me (on a few occasions it has), but it's mainly the contrast + extremely bright colors that i'm not used to and it hurts my eyes after about 2 hours of work.. I want to love this machine but I can't, therefore I must return it.... Here is where it gets complicated..
In the first couple days of my new macbook I ordered a 2.5ghz 17" mbp w/ 4g ram, 320gb hard drive and glossy display. At the time, I thought the glossy would not bother me, plus it was all the online apple store has had in the refurbished section for a while, so I went with it... It's arriving tomorrow but I'm about 90% sure that i'm not opening the box and going to send it right back because of the display.
Okay.. then tonight, a 17" mbp popped up on the apple refurb site with the same exact specs but with LED Anti Glare.. this is exactly what I wanted all along so I ordered it before it sold because I've notice they are becoming harder to find these days.
Now my concerns.. I love the previous generation macbook pro's because of the keyboard that I'm used to from my ibook and the DVI out that I need (and I might buy a 30" external eventually). I also just prefer the overall design, it's classic..
anyways, I've been reading all these forums
and I'm worried about dealing with exploding batteries (hopefully apple will be getting batteries from a new vendor soon), small high pitched noise coming from something related to the LED technology or GPU?, excessive heat issues and case warping which doesn't bother me that much and in my opinion will probably be a problem with the unibodies as well (It's just my opinion, time will tell). I love so my plan is to use my old ibook for portability since I can't buy a new macbook that doesn't give me headaches.. and then use the prev. gen MBP for around the house, occasional travel and hooking up to my 24" LG and possibly 30" in the future..
So it comes down to this,, should I accept the quirkiness of the previous generation 17" MBP and just be happy with it, use it to it's full glory.. or are the problems I listed above really something to worry about? I've greatly considered the unibody 17" antiglare as it probably addresses my main issues (the exploding battery being #1) but it also has drawbacks, for me atleast.. I prefer the classic design, old keyboard, video out options and I think both cases are prone to warping etc...
Please ease my mind with your thoughts.. should I be worrying about such small problems with the previous generation MBP so much?
